Wait
by Galway Kinnell
(Selected Poems, Bloodaxe Books)

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Reading poems out loud is a way to really get a grip on them, because their sound is part of their strength and their beauty. If words form the basic structure, then vocal intonation colours it and brings it to life. A poem read flatly, without expression, misses the opportunity to really engage the listener; it is impersonal. But a poem read with expression addresses the listener, becoming intimate and drawing them into the world of the poem as if it were created just for them. Any poem can be transformed by the way it is spoken, and this poem in particular could be legitimately read in two entirely different ways.

“Wait,” the poet might cry. “Distrust everything if you have to.” He could be shouting by now, exasperated by this person who will not wait for “personal events” that “will become interesting again”. He has to persuade them to see it! He has to drum it into them so that they open their eyes to the inevitability that time will pass and they will feel differently. I can imagine him pacing the room, his hair flapping and his arms gesticulating to his silent subject as he tries to make him or her understand that he or she must wait.

But I prefer to see this as a poem of gentle persuasion. For me the word “wait” does not apply to a person leaving a party or dinner or gathering too early, but someone who would like to leave life before it is properly over; “Wait./ Don’t go too early” asks the writer. If his tone be kindly, then the words caress. And there you have it; two different ways to look at the same poem.

The poem begs the subject, who is deemed to have lost interest in everything, to trust the hours that have carried them this far — even if all else is to be distrusted — and to “wait” for their feelings to change. In times of great sadness the idea that the hours physically carry us forward is an interesting one, because they do. The hours of our life pass reliably and consistently no matter what. Sometimes they escape us because we didn’t notice them passing, but they were there; sometimes they drag and we want to push them forwards, but they keep up their steady sixty-minute pace, counting us down until our inevitable end. With the passage of the hours our anxieties are put into perspective by the vastness of time and our minute occupation of it; they become unimportant.

“Personal events will become interesting again,” says Kinnell, because the passage of time heals us. If we retain our feelings of pain, anger or sorrow beyond a passage of time, then it is because we focused on them and clung to them, although the passage of time will have changed us anyway and those threadbare grudges or sorrows will look out of place. We can’t, however, rush the healing process; we have to “wait”, though our own impatience might often make our pain seem more unbearable than it actually is.

“Hair will become interesting” conjures up the mental picture of a person brushing their hair, looking more closely, then studying it between their fingers, registering the sensation of it on their skin as they touch it. It signifies a re-awakening of the senses.

“Pain will become interesting.” As we waken from a state where nothing is interesting, our interest in what causes us pain, emotional or physical, denotes our increasing capacity to cope with the pain, to observe it and to take it on. And while we regain our curiosity about buds opening out of season, second-hand gloves become a metaphor for us: “their memories are what give them/ the need for other hands.” Kinnell likens their need to ours: “The desolation/ of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness/ carved out of such tiny beings as we are/ asks to be filled”. Gloves require new hands to give them life and fill their emptiness, just was we, in loss or separation, are given new life by new love: “the need/ for new love is faithfulness to the old.” Perhaps because in loving again, we honour our previous loves from whom we learnt and grew, instead of negating them with our own stagnation and making nothing of the experience they gave us.

Second-hand gloves once loved previous fingers, kept them warm and made the wearer feel secure in that warmth. The fact that they are second-hand does not mean that they can never keep other fingers warm. Their purpose remains.

The reasoning continues: “Only wait a little and listen:/ music of hair,/ music of pain,/ music of looms weaving our loves again.” The lyrical quality of those words resonates with Kinnell’s reference to music. “Be there to hear it,” he asks, because the subject’s sorrows are rehearsing their whole existence, which “will play itself into total exhaustion”. As I see it, the sorrow, exhausted then, must pass.

Time changes everything and there’s nothing that can change that. This is a poem I would send to every saddened friend in the hope that they let the hours carry them past the desolation they feel now, to a time when second-hand gloves become lovely again.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

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